Pasadena, Calif.
Debra Fiori
Sr. Vice President, Corporate Talent Management
Parsons
We review our succession plan annually to ensure we are identifying and developing our talent for key leadership positions.
As an international engineering, technical, and management services firm, Parsons derives its livelihood and profitability from our world-class employees and their ability to deliver one-of-a-kind, complex rail and transit projects as well as roads/highways and aviation infrastructure. The size and scope of our projects require that we continually seek, hire, and engage top talent, including credentialed engineers, project managers, construction managers, inspectors, project controls personnel, safety professionals, and operational or technical specialists.
In other words, you!
Our methods for identifying and attracting talent is a combination of external recruiting, networking, and internal redeployment. Whenever feasible, we initially look to our existing transportation and infrastructure staff to support critical mass transit needs. This process offers our staff the opportunity for their professional growth and provides our customers with experienced Parsons personnel. We employ a workforce planner to effectively mobilize internal talent and help determine which positions internal staff could fill or require outreach to external candidates when critical or specialty needs arise.
Parsons also has fully developed succession planning, internal development, and high-growth leadership competencies assessment programs to maximize retention and critical managerial skills. We review our succession plan annually to ensure we are identifying and developing our talent for key leadership positions. We have found that our internal development and high-growth leadership competencies assessment programs have helped prepare our transportation and infrastructure leaders to assume progressive—and critical—managerial and technical roles.
When we need to conduct an external search, some of our best critical hires have come through referrals from our technical staff who have an extensive network within the mass transit, infrastructure, and transportation industries. Moreover, our employee referral program rewards staff who have made a successful referral.
Regarding recruiting, we have two recruiting teams: one team is based in North America and the other is in the Middle East Africa region. Our recruiters are assigned by discipline. When a large transportation project is awarded, we adjust the recruiters’ workloads and often create a mini-team to rapidly scale recruiting in order to meet our customer’s mobilization needs. We also have an internal executive search practice that has been instrumental in finding senior transportation and infrastructure talent and candidates with esoteric mass transit skill sets. Parsons also employs sourcers who support both our executive search team and our recruiting team in identifying and contacting candidates within the transportation industry.
As described, Parsons has the ability to rapidly scale recruiting that meets our transportation and infrastructure business needs and effectively mobilizes both external and internal talent. Overall, our capability to identify critical mass transit, transportation, and infrastructure talent contributes to Parsons’ financial strength and helps staff projects with the best-qualified professionals in this vital industry.
Hornell, N.Y.
Matt Shick
Vice-President, Human Resources, North America
Alstom
Identifying successful candidates for critical positions is more of an art than a science and, in some, cases a gamble.
As a global leader in transportation, Alstom looks for the right combination of education, training, and experience, as well as creative and communication skills. Identifying successful candidates for critical positions is more of an art than a science and, in some, cases a gamble. That means, more than likely we occasionally fall victim to what I call “resume camouflage”. This is usually revealed after the person starts and you then realize that they are a wrong fit. These situations are some of the most difficult and unpleasant to manage, causing disruption, frustration, internal/external customer dissatisfaction and extra cost to the business. We all know there is a price to be paid for these types of mistakes and that the cost of attrition runs high. In fact, one Career Builder survey asked employers to put a price tag on the cost of “one bad hire” and when it was all added up, 27% of US employers said that one bad hire can cost well over $50,000.
So, how do we mitigate the risk of a bad hire? At Alstom, we take a two-phased approach to the hiring process. First, we use a 3rd party provider to source and identify candidates for us. The 3rd party not only sources the candidates, but also prescreens them before they are submitted to Alstom hiring managers for resume review. Diving a little deeper into the 3rd party screening process, we ask the 3rd party recruiters to check candidate references, develop at least two other job references, and conduct pre-employment security screening. The most important facet of this process is the developed industry references. In our industry, we live inside of a bubble where, in many cases, everyone knows everyone. The developed references are likely to be peer references and information about skill sets and personal behaviors are readily shared.
After our 3rd party provider and hiring managers clear the candidates, we kick off our screening and interview phase to determine which candidates will be the best fit for our organization. We use a combination of behavioral techniques and situational questions to better assess an individual’s passions, organizational skills, creativity and adaptability, as well as their ability to communicate. These are items that cannot necessarily be determined solely through a background check and are vital elements of our hiring process.
Our efforts have proven to mitigate the risk of hiring the wrong person and we believe that our attrition rates rank well below average. Because we are leaders in the transportation industry, expectations from our customers are high, as they should be. Therefore, our process is comprehensive and rigorous. It is important that we select the very best so we can deliver the same.
